Harvard legiTTTimizes a scam

A funny thing happened on the way to this post. I created the above image over a year ago, intending to write about toilets doing an end run around the LSAT by accepting GRE results instead. The gist was that schools needed an innocuous, facially valid test to help get Asses In Seats while concurrently obscuring how dumb the asses actually were. In other words, a rankings scam.

Taking that to its logical conclusion, the best available easily-administered and graded, low-cost, objective test is CAPTCHA. Seriously. I've played Oregon Trail on a teletype, so I'm an expert on typing tests. "BANG!" For bonus irony, CAPTCHA is designed to defeat Artificial Intelligence yet AI will ultimately handle the work that might have gone to toilet graduates.

Harvard, eh, Hahvard, you peons, just threw a monkey wrench into that. The 8,000-pound gorilla of the legal academy announced

Starting in the fall of 2017, Harvard Law School will allow applicants to submit either the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) or the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) to be considered for admission to its three-year J.D. program.

The pilot program to accept the GRE is part of a wider strategy at Harvard Law School to expand access to legal education for students in the United States and internationally. … The Law School’s decision to accept the GRE will alleviate the financial burden on applicants who would otherwise be required to prepare and pay for an additional test.

The change is supported by an HLS study, designed in 2016 and completed earlier this year, examining, on an anonymized basis, the GRE scores of current and former HLS students who took both the GRE and the LSAT. In accordance with American Bar Association (ABA) Standards for Legal Education, the aim of the study was to determine whether the GRE is a valid predictor of first-year academic performance in law school. The statistical study showed that the GRE is an equally valid predictor of first-year grades.

Let's look at the winners:

• Harvard, which just expanded its applicant pool amidst an ongoing brain drain as the smartest students avoid law school
• Columbia and Chicago, which will pick up Harvard's dregs
• Every toilet from Brooklyn to Costa Mesa. If the most prominent law school in the country says the GRE is a valid proxy then who's to argue? Christmas just came nine months early at Cooley, where disseminating unintentionally humorous irrelevant comparisons to Harvard is an insTTTiTTTuTTTion

The losers:

• The LSAC, but they'll get over it
• Anyone going to a school outside the T6. This was also the case before Harvard's change
• A handful of 170 or 171-LSAT scorers who get Columbia as a consolation prize. It will be interesting if this bulge descends further down the rankings
• Taxpayers, as toilets prey on a newly-expanded pool of stupid, gullible SJWs

Law school vs dying of dysentery? Tough choice.

Born too late

Most of you know that TTT is an abbreviation of Third Tier Toilet. It used to connote a low-ranked institution but has become an all-purpose pejorative used either sarcastically or derisively or both.

The term comes from the moribund US News & World Report's system of ranking schools, particulary law schools, by splitting them into tiers and ranking only the top schools. USNWR's annual ratings issue is like catnip to the prestige-addled legal academy, immediately seized upon and parsed and agonized over. The influence a single, private company has over the ABA-accredited schools and their applicants is awe-inspiring; its headquarters might as well be at the summit of Mount Sinai.

Back in the good old days, prior to March 15, 2011, both USNWR and conventional wisdom spread the approximately 200 ABA schools evenly among four tiers. The top 100 schools comprising Tiers 1 and 2 were numerically ranked. The next groups were split into Tiers 3 and 4 and deemed worthy only of being listed alphabetically within their tier.

The ABA wastes much breath propounding what a noble, dignified, and progressive profession law is. The fact is that lax accreditation standards ensure there are many more graduates than legal jobs. The sole reason for Tier 3 and 4 schools to exist is to separate ignorant and greedy students from their money while providing comfortable livings to the faculty and administration. But, I digress.

Had I started this blog two weeks earlier its title wouldn't have been archaic. In one fell swoop, USNWR began ranking the top 75% schools numerically and reserved its undistinguished alphabetical listing for the absolute toilets that now make up the second tier. Bye bye, Third Tier. Overnight, prestttigious schools such as Wayne State became merely prestigious. Nando addressed the new rankings with his usual subtlety.

Eventually, which won't be long, the useful concept of the third tier will fade into obscurity. It was good while it lasted. Keep in mind that the numerical rankings are mostly meaningless and, except for elite schools, distinctions without a difference. Yale or fail.

Finally, my own alma mater has been in continual decline and is currently ranked #84. I was waiting for it to fall into the Third Tier but fate intervened.